"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Monday, July 1, 2013

This Day in History: Jul 1,1903: Start of first Tour de France bicycle race.

Launched as a newspaper publicity stunt in 1903, the Tour de France
instantly proved itself an epic test of endurance, with competitors in
the first race pedaling through the night on grueling stages that lasted
upwards of 24 hours. Cheating was also endemic from the very start. As
the Tour de France embarks on its 100th edition—world wars canceled 11
races—take a look back at the birth of the world’s most famous cycling
race.

On July 1, 1903, 60 men mounted their bicycles outside the Café au
Reveil Matin in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron. The five-dozen riders
were mostly French, with just a sprinkle of Belgians, Swiss, Germans and
Italians. A third were professionals sponsored by bicycle
manufacturers, the others simply devotees of the sport. All 60 wheelmen,
however, were united by the challenge of embarking on an unprecedented
test of endurance—not to mention the 20,000 francs in prize money—in the
inaugural Tour de France.

At 3:16 p.m., the cyclists turned the pedals of their bicycles and raced into the unknown.

Nothing like the Tour de France had ever been attempted before.
Journalist Geo Lefevre had dreamt up the fanciful race as a stunt to
boost the circulation of his struggling daily sports newspaper, L’Auto.
Henri Desgrange, the director-editor of L’Auto and a former champion
cyclist himself, loved the idea of turning France into one giant
velodrome. They developed a 1,500-mile clockwise loop of the country
running from Paris to Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes
before returning to the French capital. There were no Alpine climbs and
only six stages—as opposed to the 21 stages in the 2013 Tour— but the
distances covered in each of them were monstrous, an average of 250
miles. (No single stage in the 2013 Tour tops 150 miles.) Between one
and three rest days were scheduled between stages for recovery.

The first stage of the epic race was particularly dastardly. The
route from Paris to Lyon stretched nearly 300 miles. No doubt several of
the riders who wheeled away from Paris worried not about winning the
race—but surviving it.

Unlike today’s riders, the cyclists in 1903 rode over unpaved roads
without helmets. They rode as individuals, not team members. Riders
could receive no help. They could not glide in the slipstream of fellow
riders or vehicles of any kind. They rode without support cars. Cyclists
were responsible for making their own repairs. They even rode with
spare tires and tubes wrapped around their torsos in case they developed
flats.

And unlike modern-day riders, the cyclists in the 1903 Tour de
France, forced to cover enormous swathes of land, spent much of the race
riding through the night with moonlight the only guide and stars the
only spectators. During the early morning hours of the first stage, race
officials came across many competitors “riding like sleepwalkers.”

Hour after hour through the night, riders abandoned the race. One of
the favorites, Hippolyte Aucouturier, quit after developing stomach
cramps, perhaps from the swigs of red wine he took as an early 1900s
version of a performance enhancer.

Twenty-three riders abandoned the first stage of the race, but the
one man who barreled through the night faster than anyone else was
another pre-race favorite, 32-year-old professional Maurice Garin. The
mustachioed French national worked as a chimney sweep as a teenager
before becoming one of France’s leading cyclists. Caked in mud, the
diminutive Garin crossed the finish line in Lyon a little more than 17
hours after the start outside Paris. In spite of the race’s length, he
won by only one minute.

“The Little Chimney Sweep” built his lead as the race progressed. By
the fifth stage, Garin had a two-hour advantage. When his nearest
competitor suffered two flat tires and fell asleep while resting on the
side of the road, Garin captured the stage and the Tour was all but won.

The sixth and final stage, the race’s longest, began in Nantes at 9
p.m. on July 18, so that spectators could watch the riders arrive in
Paris late the following afternoon. Garin strapped on a green armband to
signify his position as race leader. (The famed yellow jersey worn by
the race leader was not introduced until 1919.) A crowd of 20,000 in the
Parc des Princes velodrome cheered as Garin won the stage and the first
Tour de France. He bested butcher trainee Lucien Pothier by nearly
three hours in what remains the greatest winning margin in the Tour’s
history. Garin had spent more than 95 hours in the saddle and averaged
15 miles per hour. In all, 21 of the 60 riders completed the Tour, with
the last-place rider more than 64 hours behind Garin.

For Desgrange, the race was an unqualified success. Newspaper
circulation soared six-fold during the race. However, a chronic problem
that would perpetually plague the Tour de France was already present in
the inaugural race—cheating. The rule breaking started in the very first
stage when Jean Fischer illegally used a car to pace him. Another rider
was disqualified in a subsequent stage for riding in a car’s
slipstream.

That paled in comparison, however, to the nefarious activity the
following year in the 1904 Tour de France. As Garin and a fellow rider
pedaled through St. Etienne, fans of hometown rider Antoine Faure formed
a human blockade and beat the men until Lefevre arrived and fired a
pistol to break up the melee. Later in the race, fans protesting the
disqualification of a local rider placed tacks and broken glass on the
course. Riders acted little better. They hitched rides in cars during
the dark and illegally took help from outsiders. Garin himself was
accused of illegally obtaining food during a portion of one stage. The
race was so plagued by scandal that four months later Desgrange
disqualified Garin and the three other top finishers. It, of course,
wouldn’t be the last time a Tour winner was stripped of his title.